


Just Interesting

by HetaCon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi Keiji is a Good Significant Other, Bokuto Koutarou Has ADHD, Bokuto Koutarou has literally all my love, Character Study, I can project as a treat, M/M, Mentioned Konoha Akinori, and I am a sucker for him having ADHD, mentioned yamiji takeyuki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29104503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HetaCon/pseuds/HetaCon
Summary: Bokuto Koutarou has always felt like he was different from everyone around him.He couldn’t pinpoint why for a long time but by the time Akaashi comes into his life, it seems irrelevant. Even still, he manages to help Bokuto with that too. Akaashi listens.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	Just Interesting

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: A couple swears, very slight food mentions at some points, Bokuto feels insecure
> 
> It’s so nice to see a character that is so ADHD-coded and not just in a “Oh my goodness, he has so much energy, he must have ADHD!” kind of way. He displays so many of the common symptoms that aren’t actually discussed and it just helps me feel seen and understood. If nothing else, I find comfort in the fact that there’s someone who has people who care about him even with all of the odd parts of ADHD. It was a relief to write this, it was nice to make more of an inattentive interpretation of ADHD than hyperactive ADHD. Anyways, enjoy!

Bokuto Koutarou’s life was a confusing, awful, interesting mess of a million thoughts and actions and feelings at any given moment. Everything was too much, not enough, and everything in between that on a good day, he could barely manage. The worst days were ones he had no control over, the best where he accomplished some things despite the shortcomings, and he could feel like he was on top of the world as easily as if it was all coming to an end around him.

The noises in his head where unique, they made him an interesting person.

That was the only comfortable word that people would use to describe him really: interesting. And sure, he had his moments where he would agree. But he knew no one ever meant it as a positive thing, not completely.

Years of struggling framed up the start of Bokuto’s life though he never really made the connection. So sure, he made a few stupid mistakes on his math tests and he was more emotional as a kid than a lot of his friends. He was constantly acting like a lost puppy dog as he trailed behind his classmates, ready to do whatever they did. He got way more into things than anyone he knew, his age or otherwise. But none of this ever struck him as odd. He didn’t think his behavior was all too weird. He got decent grades, he had friends to hang out with, he thought his behavior was normal. Many other people didn’t though and he realized over time that people weren’t really his friends, he just pestered them too much for them to comfortably distance themselves. His grades stayed decent as a result of constant pressure to make sure he made something of himself. A lucky (in some regards) set of circumstances kept him from realizing the oddness of all of it and how he existed.

Bokuto was smart, Bokuto was kind, but he was just strange to other people. Not strange though, interesting.

Things started to slip though as he got into middle school. Suddenly he was a lot more emotionally charged than normal, suddenly he was spacing out and doing worse on tests. Homework started taking him more time than usual to finish, to the point where it was all he’d do when he got home until he had to sleep. He couldn’t stop focusing on things that didn’t need his attention, he couldn’t start to focus on big projects that did, let alone find the motivation to finish them. He suddenly couldn’t think about anything but volleyball and he was damn good at it. It was all that occupied his mind for hours on end when he should be focusing on other things and he alone kept pushing to new heights, leaving the rest of his team to watch begrudgingly as he gave his all to something no one else seemed to care as much about. None of it was adding up properly, this suddenly didn’t seem like it was coincidental. But why realize this now?

No matter the issues he realized he was going through, Bokuto knew that people found him weird. Not weird though, interesting.

Even more started to interfere with his life when he got to high school. Suddenly he couldn’t take tests if he heard the slightest taps of a pencil against someone’s desk. His mind would go blank for a minute, he would feel like he couldn’t do anything but sit there frozen, before he hopefully (and that wasn’t always the case) snapped out of it and continued on, resisting the urge to squirm as more sounds grated against his already hyper-aware nerves.

When Coach would tell him to focus and watch what he was doing during practice, he felt his face go hot with pure embarrassment. He would worry if he was even following instructions right if Coach had only told him once because his brain always seemed to filter parts out and he missed something upon following through. He started to feel anxiety clawing at his stomach when he started to run forward before it was time, he felt a twisting feeling when he felt a spike hit wrong, he felt a churning deep in his gut whenever he made any number of mistakes and it felt like eyes were glued to him, observing how his hand was a millimeter too far to the left, his jump was off by a second, his approach or his technique wasn’t absolutely perfect and free from critique.

Bokuto knew that if people could hear the thoughts in his head, they’d think he was crazy. Not crazy though, interesting.

Slowly things seemed to get better as he started paying attention to them, acknowledging that it existed. While he didn’t try to figure out any of these problems, he finally started to make friends, real friends who he still got a little awkward around but tried to hide his fears with jokes and light moods. He was able to focus more on things the more he let himself give in to volleyball. He accepted that his emotions didn’t make him less human than other people, even if he didn’t know why these types of things were stronger for him than it seemed to be for others. He learned how to lead his actions with his head rather than his heart most of the time though that one was a little harder to grasp.

And then one day, Akaashi Keiji barreled into his life and completely threw everything into more chaos than before, with no possible hope for things returning to normal.

Akaashi did nothing wrong but suddenly, he brought out everything Bokuto was struggling to push down for years. And of all the results Bokuto expected from it, feeling heard wasn’t even remotely close.

Akaashi had joined the Fukurodani volleyball team and Bokuto couldn’t have been happier with how things were shaping up the further along in the year they got. Bokuto would bug Akaashi at practice a lot of the time and Akaashi didn’t seem to mind in all honesty. Though he could tell the setter was more of a silent type, he didn’t show any discomfort on his face as Bokuto prattled off random thoughts that came to mind while they did their stretches.

“So Akaashiiii, do you want to know something cool I learned last night at like, 1 in the morning?” Bokuto asked, grinning to himself as Akaashi looked over at him.

Akaashi nodded. “Though you shouldn’t be up so late, Bokuto-san,” the first year said quietly.

“Well the thing is that I couldn’t sleep you know? And it was just too bright out because my mom’s been meaning to get me new curtains but we keep forgetting and it was too bright in my room because it was a full moon last night and everything!” Bokuto explained before shaking his head. “Oh, anyways, so did you know that you can read time by looking at a cat’s eyes? Kuroo sent me a really cool article about it so you can blame him for keeping me up! He and I were talking about it for a while! He saw it and thought I’d like it so he sent it to me!”

“Who is Kuroo, Bokuto-san?” Akaashi asked without hesitation, still giving Bokuto his attention. “Is he one of your friends outside the volleyball team?”

“Oh no, he’s on a volleyball team, just not ours! He’s this really cool dude from the Nekoma team, he and I snuck out of the summer training camp last year to see how many cicadas we could find because I couldn’t sleep! He was sleeping next to me and he heard me kicking at my blankets and was like ‘Hi, I’m Kuroo, and you’re being loud, are you ok bro?’ and I was like ‘Hey hey hey, I’m Bokuto and I can’t sleep so no!’ so he took me outside. He was kind of a jerk though and kept rubbing it in my face when he was able to block one of my spikes the next morning but when I got mad at him without meaning to, he talked to me during dinner and said it was ok and he forgave me for it. It was the first time I didn’t ruin a friendship when I got mad,” he laughed out as he recounted the events, smiling tightly to himself at the last part as he looked at the ground.

‘Details, Bokuto, Akaashi didn’t ask for any of that now did he?’ he mentally scolded himself.

“Did you guys continue to talk through the rest of training camp?” Akaashi asked another question, keeping the conversation going. He didn’t once tell Bokuto to stop and it was only as they were playing a practice game that the two of them stopped talking.

Akaashi became Bokuto’s friend off the court too and Bokuto noticed that Akaashi paid a lot more attention to him than a large majority of people he’d met in his life.

Akaashi seemed to be engaged whenever the two of them spoke and Bokuto was a little unnerved at times when he noticed Akaashi was still listening. He’d just finished recapping a long set of events that related to something he had referenced earlier in the conversation. Akaashi had asked a question and Bokuto’s brain had deemed the entire backstory necessary so he just started talking.

“Sorry, you probably didn’t want all of that did you?” Bokuto muttered out finally, his cheeks growing hot. He wished the ground would swallow him up at this very moment, he’d gone off on yet another tangent.

“I asked and you answered my question how you saw fit, Bokuto-san,” was Akaashi’s response and Bokuto looked over to him, trying to push down the stupid urge to cry. Akaashi just said something nice, that was it!

“C’mon ‘Kaashi, you can just tell me if I’m talking too much!” Bokuto protested but he frowned a little as Akaashi shook his head.

“You don’t need to talk less, Bokuto-san, I’m still listening.”

The conversation didn’t end there though as someone from Akaashi’s class asked him for notes a few minutes later when Bokuto was talking. Akaashi gave him a little signal to wait a moment as he talked with her for a minute, going over them with her.

Bokuto started to scroll through his phone, pushing down the awful feeling in his stomach the best he could.

“Bokuto-san, you can continue now,” Akaashi said and Bokuto looked up, surprised. The first year blinked at him slightly. “What’s wrong?”

With a cough, Bokuto held back more stupid tears. He was having an interesting reaction to this whole scenario for sure he told himself. “It’s nothing, it’s just uh... I forgot what I was talking about...” he muttered. That was partially true, he had forgotten while Akaashi was explaining his notes to that girl. No one had remembered he had been talking before though.

“I think it was something about what Konoha-san had said after morning practice today?”

Bokuto felt his stomach flip. “You remembered that? I was just rambling, it wasn’t really important or anything.”

“If you wanted to talk about it, I think that’s enough to make it important.”

Of course luck just had to be on Bokuto’s side (note the sarcasm) when he figured out he liked Akaashi. Like, like liked Akaashi, as in ‘he wanted so badly to scoop him up when they win a game and kiss him absolutely silly’ kind of like. And the way he realized it was just as stupid as he expected of his brain.

He’d ended up botching his fifth receive and Coach Yamiji was getting frustrated, to the point where Bokuto felt himself fuming. He barely resisted the urge to stamp his foot at it but he still called out a “One more Coach!” as he got into position.

He botched another one. Another receive. A sixth receive and he still couldn’t get it right.

Bokuto felt himself start shutting down and everything crashed down so fast. He felt his stomach drop and his jaw hurt from how hard he clenched it. He opened his mouth to try to say something but he couldn’t find the right words. Coach was looking at him as was the rest of his team and he let out a frustrated scream before racing to the doors and slamming them open, running away from practice.

His brain decided to be merciful this time and he was able to sit down relatively close to the gym after a little aggravated pacing. He curled in over himself, digging his nails into his arms. Coach would be mad, he knew he would, but he felt nothing but shame and anger boiling in his blood.

“I don’t care Coach, be angry at me, I don’t care! It’s not my fucking fault!” he yelled to no one. He looked over though as he heard gentle footsteps from around the side of the building and he realized he wasn’t actually alone. If that was Coach, Bokuto would start crying, he didn’t mean to get aggressive!

Akaashi tentatively peeked around the corner and when he spotted Bokuto, he looked more determined as he walked over, sitting next to him without hesitation. Bokuto turned away from him slightly and looked away but Akaashi stayed where he was.

What an interesting situation Bokuto had gotten the two of them into.

“Are you ok?” Akaashi calmly asked to which Bokuto shook his head.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

It was the first time Bokuto wasn’t asked to explain himself. It was framed as a simple question about what he himself wanted. And honestly, he wanted to so he did.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I didn’t mean to get angry like that but it happens all the time and I feel like I’m just such a pain in the ass because of it! Coach should just take me off the court at this point and never let me play again, it’s what I deserve for being a crappy and difficult player,” he said, feeling a small weight come off of his chest as he finally said those words out in the open.

Akaashi stayed quiet for a moment before responding. “He’s not going to take you off the court, you’re a good player Bokuto-san. He was the one to send me out here after I asked if you were ok. I don’t think he wanted you to be alone right now.”

“He... He did?”

“Yes, I hope I can be of use for you though,” Akaashi merely said, as quiet as ever.

Bokuto felt himself smiling and he looked to Akaashi. “Can I hug you?”

“Hm?”

“Can I... I dunno, can I hug you? You can say no!” Bokuto repeated, panicking a little now that he thought of what he was saying. Would Akaashi find him weird?

“Oh, I uh... Yes you may,” Akaashi answered.

Bokuto couldn’t stop from flinging himself at Akaashi even if he’d tried. A little kindness and Bokuto was head-over-heels for his setter.

Even as that school year had passed and Bokuto became a third year, as well as the team captain, Akaashi still hung out with him and Bokuto felt them getting even closer.

At this point, he almost stopped thinking completely about what his brain was doing and how he functioned because Akaashi never once seemed to question it. Obviously he would point out if Bokuto did something out of line but that never happened often and Bokuto tended to know what he did wrong too. There was no guesswork and that made ignoring the usual pangs of guilt that happened daily so much easier to do.

Sometimes his thoughts went too fast and he’d end up making a fool of himself, such as the time Akaashi had gotten a call from his mom and Bokuto had ended up answering Akaashi’s “I love you” with one of his own. Akaashi looked surprised but he just smiled a little after he hung up and told him that he did indeed love Bokuto too. It may not have been romantically as far as Bokuto knew but he’d take it.

He still had mini meltdowns and lockups during practices but Akaashi was always there and seemed to know what to do. He somehow always seemed to know when to address the issue and when to leave Bokuto be. Bokuto had no idea how he did that when he felt like he couldn’t even understand his own feelings a large majority of the time.

Akaashi didn’t ever make him feel silly for how much he’d forget where he put his chapstick or do hand shakes as he was trying to remember something or stop in the middle of a sentence when his brain moved too fast for his mouth to catch up with. Bokuto felt himself falling even harder than he already had as the year slowly progress.

Bokuto first voiced his feelings about himself one day during summer break. The two had just come back to Bokuto’s house from getting ice cream and the two were melting under the summer heat. Something about it was making him delirious apparently because as he lay on the couch, sweating buckets, with Akaashi hanging upside down in a chair across the room fanning himself, Bokuto was spilling all of the thoughts he’d never thought to tell anyone.

“Hey Akaashi? Do you ever think I’m like... weird or like, interesting or anything?” he asked, looking at the ceiling.

“Hm? What do you mean Bokuto-san?”

“I don’t know, just like I’m not like other people, I don’t act like everyone should or whatever.”

Akaashi thought for a moment. “Forgive me Bokuto-san, I’m still a little lost.”

“Well it’s just that I’ve always felt different from all of the people I’ve ever been around. I don’t seem to know when to shut up and I get more riled up than I should and I feel weird for it. And like, is it possible to be too into something? Like, too passionate? Cause I sometimes think I’m that way with volleyball and it makes me feel bad because who else puts this much time into one thing? I mean, a guy should have hobbies right?” Bokuto explained.

“Too much passion is usually called obsession.”

“Yeah but here’s the thing, I don’t think it’s an obsession! It’s not like it’s bad for me or anyone else! I just get so into it though and I feel like I can just absolutely lose myself in a game! It’s my life, it’s what I do! I haven’t met another person who’s gotten that way about the things they like, I dunno.” Bokuto sighs before snorting a little. “Except maybe how much you get into taking care of me,” he joked.

Akaashi sits upright and Bokuto looks to him, worried if he said something wrong.

“Before I say this, I want to say that I don’t mean this in a negative way, ok Bokuto-san?” Akaashi prefaces.

Bokuto steels himself, nodding.

“Are you sure? I don’t have to say it if you don’t wish to hear it,” Akaashi tries gently.

“Nah, tell me, I want to know whether or not it noticeable that I’m a mess!” Bokuto chuckles. He’s a little nervous though. Akaashi acknowledges the comment silently but opens his mouth to speak.

“I’ve noticed that, yes. I don’t think it’s your fault and I don’t think it’s anything bad though. You just feel differently about a lot of things and people who don’t understand that can, quite respectively, suck it.”

Bokuto laughs loudly at that and smiles a bit before his expression grows thoughtful, letting Akaashi continue.

“You try to be your best and I worry about that sometimes, that is the only thing I am worried about really.”

“How come, Akaashi?”

Akaashi sighs slightly, trying to word it right. He always had been better at that than Bokuto and he knows that no matter what, Akaashi won’t hurt him with his words.

“You want to be your best for everyone around you, even the people you can’t please,” Akaashi explains. “Even if you don’t like someone, you still want to impress them. Is it not enough to be held in high regards by the people who care about you?”

Bokuto blinks, letting out a breath. “Akaashi Keiji, you’re never one to pull any punches huh?” he sighs adoringly. “I don’t know, I just don’t like the idea of... Of people not liking me. If people don’t like me, I’m doing something wrong right? I’ve had a lot of people not like me. They never said it but I could tell, I didn’t actually have any friends until I met the other thirds years and then you. It’s dumb but I want people to like me, I want to know I’m doing something right.”

“Does my opinion count for anything?” Akaashi asks him quietly.

“More than anyone,” he answers a little too quickly though Akaashi doesn’t seem to mind.

Akaashi’s voice is soft and gentle as they look at each other. “All you need to do then... Is be you.”

Bokuto started to talk about his feelings a lot more and even if it took several minutes of rambles and garbled nonsense for Bokuto to get his point across, Akaashi would listen and they’d work the problem out together. It was nice having someone with him to make sense of everything in his head.

Eventually Akaashi had brought up the topic of ADHD. Bokuto had heard of it, of course he had, but he didn’t think there was any way he could’ve had it, not when he noticed everything so late. And he wasn’t nearly as out of control as people with ADHD were talked about being. With explanation and reassurance from Akaashi though, everything seemed to click in place. Bokuto had a name for everything that affected his life. All of his insecurities, quirks, odd and ends, and even strengths suddenly made sense and he felt like he could cry. He did cry in fact and Akaashi held him close as he was flooded with relief, spending an hour thinking over how it all made total sense.

Bokuto still felt he had plenty of flaws even with this realization. He still felt his emotions sometimes spiral out of control over his mistakes during practice, he sometimes said weird things to his friends that he initially thought were alright, he forgot things he was holding or trying to find all the time, and he could barely keep track of all the thoughts in his head. He got frustrated at himself for these problems, especially when he found himself aware of the reasons but without a single way to actually stop it.

All of this didn’t matter though as Akaashi accepted his confession around the end of Bokuto’s third year. Bokuto tried to make up a million excuses for why Akaashi didn’t have to say yes but Akaashi just laughed and assured him that yes, he did love Bokuto too, and yes, he was sure in his decision.

The two worked through Bokuto’s ADHD and eventually they got him medication. He felt more ok with himself as he was able to focus on just one thought at the moment. Akaashi was his world and as he prepared himself to work even harder at volleyball in the year to come, he knew his boyfriend, the one currently asleep on his shoulder in Bokuto’s room, would be supportive of him and continue to love him no matter how he continued to grow and change. Finally, he felt ok with himself just how he was.

For Akaashi, Bokuto was interesting, and the ADHD had nothing to do with it. Bokuto had always liked it that way.


End file.
